


Lethe

by Fierceawakening



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 00:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16545653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: I really don't like Megatron's redemption arc, because I feel like it leaves a whole lot of things creepier than they would be with Megs the baddie. So here you have it: the Decepticons are over. Yay?





	Lethe

The mech with the long fingers was staring at her again.

File drummed her own fingers, short fat nubs that didn’t feel right, on the bar. She’d had them rounded off months ago, but she still missed her claws.

Everyone was doing it, though. It was this big exciting thing. War’s over, get your claws filed down, there’s peace in our time.

Get your claws filed down and scrub something else off. She looked down at her chest, an involuntary motion. She hadn’t stopped doing that yet, either.

It wasn’t so obvious, not any more, but the spot where the old symbol had been was still… pretty, compared to the rest of her. Polished and buffed and taken care of. The rest of her frame was all banged up, grime and grit worn into it.

 _Might be why Fingers is looking at me._ She wanted to shake her head, but that movement at least she could control. Wouldn’t do to be too obvious.

She could guess why Fingers was there. It wasn’t easy to get used to a war being over, sometimes. Not when it just ended. Not when the mech who’d started it stood up in front of all of Cybertron and said “we were wrong to assert ourselves” in his speech.

She looked around. Some of her old friends were here. She hadn’t even noticed, not really. It was easier that way.

Switch was over in a corner, laughing and making jokes with some mechs she didn’t know. He had an easy smile, these days, one she’d never seen when he was off on bombing runs. Or coming back from them. He looked good, now, and his laugh was warm and open.

He didn’t have a symbol either, not the old one and not the new one, the ugly red thing everyone had taken up just because the victors wore it. But he didn’t have the blank spot, scrubbed and obvious. He had scars there, dents and scrapes and a big ugly weld.

He didn’t want anyone to be able to guess what he’d worn there. Not even himself, probably.

She squinted at Fingers. _That your handiwork, ugly? Or did somebody else with needles in their hands do it?_

She cycled a sigh. Creepy, these mnemosurgeons. These guys who rooted around in your processor and made you forget.

He remembered there was a war, probably. She guessed they’d left him that much. Megatron’s speech had been broadcast all at once on every screen on Cybertron that day.

The others had been excited. They hadn’t heard from Megatron in—well, too long—and hacking the entire grid and declaring smoking flaming war on whoever had bothered him this week was exactly the kind of thing he’d do to tell them all he was back and get them thirsty for energon.

 _You’re not thirsty for energon,_ she told herself. _Nobody is. Cybertron’s a peaceful world._

_Nobody ever was._

It had seemed wrong to File. Weird. Quiet. Megatron just standing there, looking too polished, too pristine. Not scarred or scratched or covered in energon, not smirking at the enemies who thought they had him. Just… tired.

Then he’d said it. The war was over. The fight was a mistake.

And not just the war.

“The Decepticons are over.”

She pressed her blunt little fingers hard against the table. No one said that word anymore.

No one thought that word any more. Especially not with creeps like Fingers following them around.

Why think about it? Why miss it? War was hell. Fear and blaster fire and the wrong guys winning and your friends falling to the ground, lifeless and gray.

_We met in this bar, sometimes._

She peered over at Switch from the corners of his optics. He’d tried to give speeches, sometimes. Like he was Megatron himself. He was a damn idiot and they never landed right, but he had something to say for once, and he’d say it over and over, to anyone who’d listen.

Now he wasn’t saying much of anything. Now he was laughing.

She’d told herself they got him, at first. It made her feel better to assume it. Some overzealous winners, dragging a loud ex-‘Con to the Institute for reprogramming because he just wasn’t excited enough that Lord Megatron had finally laid down his arms.

She’d told herself the mech in the corner, laughing too much, wasn’t Switch. Just someone who looked like him. Some mech they’d hollowed out and made theirs.

But if they’d got him, if he’d fought back, why was the space where his symbol had been so covered?

It was overkill.

And it had been there before he changed. She’d seen him one night in the bar, after everyone else had gone home. It had been a bad night but most of them had turned in early. Even the hardest high grade didn’t get you ready to be nothing, and most of them had known it. Had just gone home, stumbled to berth, wondered how the hell you got through tomorrow when tomorrow meant you didn’t exist anymore.

But Switch had stayed. Stayed, and sat, and not smiled. Like he usually did, with the not smiling.

But he’d just stared ahead, like he wasn’t seeing anything. And his optics had flickered, like he was thinking.

Deciding to do it, maybe. Figuring out where to find someone like Fingers. Thinking through how to tell them he wanted to forget.

And he'd covered up his mark even back then. Too thoroughly. Too carefully.

She hadn’t seen him for a while after that. Maybe he’d avoided the bar. Maybe he’d known that Decepticons gathered there, so why be seen in a place like that anyway? Or maybe it took a while, whatever they did.

Or maybe erasing a whole war’s worth of memories wasn’t easy, and they had to try more than once, just to make sure that it took.

But he’d come back, eventually. And seemed fine. Jovial, happy. Laughing. What was there to get mad about when Cybertron was whole and everyone was at peace and no one cared who built you or why or what you turned into? Life was… nice.

Her optics met Fingers’. She felt a pang of envy, somewhere deep in her spark. What was it like to not be angry anymore?

What was it like to not know you’d lost?

The mech with the long fingers got up from his seat, a slow sinuous movement. He slid toward File, oozing out of his shadows, and laid his hand on the table, his fingers splayed.

Needles emerged from their tips, painstakingly polished, impossibly fine.

“Are you looking for something?” he purred, his voice low and intimate, like someone she knew well.

She didn’t look up at him. Just scowled, like the kind of rough machine you’d find in a bar that Decepticons used to frequent.

“This is my table,” she said. “Move.”

He arched an optic ridge. “Hmm?”

File slammed her hand down on the table, just close enough to his to see his needles twitch.

She missed her claws, but it made her smile.

“I said move,” she growled. “Or I break your hand.”


End file.
